


Here

by qaara (maladictive)



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, VERY NONlinear but hopefully the pieces come together.... i hope, some crap zoldyck parents in the distance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-21
Updated: 2016-04-21
Packaged: 2018-06-03 15:54:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6616537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maladictive/pseuds/qaara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You can’t promise something like that,” Gon tells a shadow. “But I will. I’ll find Alluka and Killua again, I promise.”<br/>“How?”<br/>“I’ll be here.”</p><p>a sort of Spirited Away AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	Here

**Author's Note:**

> as usual, expect little, and have much fun. Comments etc are always appreciated!

The water is pitch black and mirror like. It’s eerily and completely quiet, and to the untrained eye the surface seems perfectly still. To the trained eye the water is discomfiting in its stillness. Gon detects an odd tremor somewhere at the bottom; every few moments there is a barely traceable wave at the surface. It’s been like that since he came back.

The full moon is red and looming above him, but he watches a dull orange reflection on the surface of the water.

He’s been here at the Muthalath of the mountain, the forest, and the lake five times before this. This is his sixth.

 _Triangle_ , the books say. A _Muthalath_ is a classical and nearly archaic use of the word triangle to refer to the ancient belief in the cursed nature of balanced sets of three. The topographical connections between river, mountain, and forest make a perfect triangle, according to legend, thus cursing the space between them.

Gon maps it out himself. He hunts legends.

There’s no river, it turns out. But there’s a lake between the mountain and the forest.

 

_\- it’s alright -_

 

Six years prior to the red moon and the nearly still water, Gon is considerably less quiet and just as patient.

He cast his line an hour ago, and now he waits. He wonders what cursed fish taste like.

The water moves as water should; the surface ripples at the brush cool breeze and waves with the movement of water-life near the surface. It swirls around his legs where he’s wading down the shallows, going deeper into the lake than he probably should.

The moon is an odd and chilling red, but Gon thinks it’s rather nice against the darkness of the night sky.

He’s never been here before, but he came chasing the rumor of a cursed lake with cursed fish. Gon’s always chased things, lest someone try and stop him.

This is the first time, and Gon is wading in the shallows of the lake, the water is black and inky, but it’s moving like water should.

Then it stops.

Gon hasn’t got time to react. He blinks, the water stops. He blinks, the water doesn’t move again.

The reflection of the moon is gone. The breeze is dead, and he turns with the beginnings of anxiety in his gut.

And his forest is gone.

Gon stares at the new and vast spread of grass. The sprawling, twisting, enormous trees are gone. And in their place is a grassy landscape so alien that he runs towards it and dives in.

He runs before he realizes he won’t soon reach the other side. Above him the sky swallows the field, and he finds himself up to his knees in stagnant water.

Gon turns and sees the grassy hills, and the panic sets in just as the voices begin. Lights begin spilling around him, and his shadow is cast and uncast on the water. One ripple meets the backs of his knees and swirls around him.

He turns again and makes one ripple, stumbles back and makes another.

In all his travels and all his adventures, he’s never encountered something like this.

He turns and runs for the grass, away from the enormous boat and its chattering noise, thinking only to hide and observe and wait.

The grass doesn’t let him stay. He’s cast into the water again almost immediately, and he faces the lake’s shore and the hills of empty space again.

He ducks into the water this time, holds his breath carefully, and watches. More chatter. When he tries to leave the water he’s sent back, but maybe if he stays where’s he allowed to be he can go where he wants to go.

The water gets less and less shallow the more he moves out, a completely different lake than the one before the shift. He’s swimming before long, barely making a single ripple in the water and hardly making a sound. The boat (or perhaps it's a ship, Gon’s travels limit him to the peopled world, he knows more about mountains than oceans) is long and wooden from what he can see in the darkness. In fact, the only visible things are the lights, seemingly bobbing within and around the ship as it glides through the water towards a dock.

From under the dock, Gon notes that the lights seem to be unattached to anything, and that he can’t talk.

He knows this because something brushed against his leg as soon as he attached himself firmly to a wooden pillar (unblemished by weeds, shelled animals, or any water marks). When he fights back a scream, he becomes acutely aware that nothing comes out. He feels the strain and pull of his throat and his jaw, and nothing comes out.

The panic sets in.

The panic alleviates when he remembers he must figure out what brushed against his leg. He ducks under the water again, reaching out with his hand to find whatever it was, and finds nothing.

He surfaces on the lake’s shore, facing the grassy nothingness, and doesn’t scream in frustration because he knows he can’t.

 

\- _Gon, I promise -_

 

The next time he reaches the docks, there’s someone there.

A young boy bows at each light that bobs out of the ship, and Gon only sees what’s happening through the shadows and reflections. When the lights reflected on the water reach the dock, the boy bows and they disappear. Footsteps continue above him.

It goes on and on, and Gon waits.

It feels like years, and then the boy bows one final time, and the ship disappears. Gon shifts in surprise, and makes a single ripple. The boy bursts into view, upside down, clawed hands out and at Gon’s throat.

Gon ducks into the water and lets it all swallow him back.

At the edge of the grassy hills, the boy is waiting for him. His hair is shocking in the dark; lit only by the moon.

“Quick thinking, but if you do that enough you’ll disappear,” he says.

Gon doesn’t say anything.

“What’s your name?” The boy’s bare feet are brushing the water’s edge, and he looks oddly fascinated. Gon waves at his throat, hoping he’ll—

“Oh,” the boy says. “You’re already going.”

Gon shrugs in a way that he hopes says, “ _it happens, what can ya do?”_  He even rolls his eyes.

The boy snorts, oddly feline eyes relaxing.

“I can help with that,” he says.

 

_\- I promise –_

 

“You have to hold your breath while we cross this bridge, can you do that?”

Gon nods gleefully; of course he can.

“Right, water-boy,” the boy says; snorting for what might be the fifth time since the first time. “Let’s go!”

The boy grabs his hand, and Gon thinks that’s the least confusing thing to have happened since the forest disappeared.

He holds his breath.

_–_

Killua falters when he’s explaining himself to girl he called Alluka. She seems to live in an odd part of the beautiful manor, near the far edge and secluded by flowers and trees and farm animals.

“My sister,” Killua said. “She likes being here, where no one can hurt her or tell her what to do. She keeps the magic running, but we’re gonna run away one day.”

 _Magic?_   Gon wants to ask about everything, he wants to know about every flower he saw, wants to hear about every odd berry and fruit. He wants to try each one. He can’t talk.

Now Gon tries to tell Alluka and Gon his name.

Gon makes writing motions in the air, and shrugs. He could write it out, he wants to tell them. Alluka frowns, but pulls out a piece of paper from a cluttered desk, and a brush.

She hands them to Gon, and he begins to write. Before he finishes the last stroke however, she covers his hand with hers and pulls.

The letters are gone.

“I’ll keep your name safe; no one else will hear it from me,” she tells him. “I’ll give you a new one, you have to forget your old name.”

The boy beside Killua doesn’t falter, but he wonders.

“Heer,” she tells him.

Heer nods his head. Somewhere in his head he thinks he should be laughing, but he can’t imagine why, and he knows no sound will come out.

-

Heer meets the owner once, along with his eldest son. He hopes he’ll never see them again.

Something tells him he’s never been that lucky.

-

Killua grows darker, more moody and upset. But they have fun together. Heer works all day tending to customers and following Kalluto around, but at night Killua finds him and takes him everywhere. He’s seen the town, the “safe” water; he’s even played on the roofs with Killua and Alluka one midnight.

Alluka only comes out at midnight, and then when the sun starts rising she goes back to her place on the outskirts of the manor. They play all sorts of games and talk about so many things, and Killua gives him hints about how to make the work during the day easier.

Heer loves playing with them, and at first he thought Killua’s gloomy faces were because Alluka always leaves as soon as dawn breaks.

Killua flies him to the sleeping quarters, and Heer wonders why that’s so ordinary.

Sometimes they both linger, and Killua asks questions Heer can nod or shake his head to.

“Do you have a lot of friends?”

Heer knows he does, he just can’t think of them. He shrugs.

“Do you have a family?”

Heer nods.

“Do you miss them?”

Heer shrugs.

But one day Killua holds tightly to his hand for no reason, refusing to let go and let Heer step onto the balcony of the sleeping quarters, and he says—

“I wish I knew you.”

-

Heer forgets things easily now. He sees Killua’s father once and thinks he’d like to remember that kind of menacing aura to use for himself one day, then forgets why he’d need one.

-

Killua’s acting more and more odd. He doesn’t want to play anymore, and stares at Heer like he’s seeing nothing sometimes. But then, the work is getting harder and harder, and the owner has stopped by to see Heer at work several times. Oftentimes, Killua is with him, staring blankly ahead and pretending not to see Heer.

One particularly difficult customer tried to drown Heer for ordering the wrong scent for its bath, a giant snake spirit with a skull on its head. Killua intervenes smoothly, whisking Heer away and depositing him outside the baths. He doesn’t miss a beat between ignoring Heer’s frantic waving and returning to the baths to apologize to the customer.

That same night, Killua really wants to hold Heer’s hand.

Heer, though frustrated at the raging emptiness he can’t identify, likes this, and it gets easier to withstand stranger-Killua when real Killua wants to make it up to him so badly.

-

He’s so tired. The emptiness, once raging, now throbs and gapes.

There comes a night where he can’t leave the sleeping quarters to play with Alluka and Killua, and has to rest the whole night through. Everything in him hurts, and he can’t shake the feeling of disappointment.

He should be stronger.

Heer takes his futon out to the hallway outside, where he can lie on the balcony and stay with Alluka and Killua for as long as possible, and sleeps.

He wakes up with Killua sleeping beside him, holding his hand, and Alluka stroking his hair and forehead.

“Hello again,” she whispers.

Gon beams up at her and it makes the emptiness feel manageable.

 

_\- How about I promise instead, Killua? –_

 

Gon has to learn to answer to Heer, since Alluka insists he maintain that cover.

Killua’s gone a lot now, he rarely comes by at night, and the warm weather boils into summer.

And the nights are shorter even than they were in his world. He hasn’t seen Alluka in a long while, since she tends to disappear when Killua’s away.

And Killua always comes back covered in bruises and fading wounds.

He’s woken by a loud and wet crash one morning in a series of mornings when Killua’s not there.

“GON!”

He hears Alluka shouting over something roaring, and he’s running towards her voice before he realizes he ought to, fighting every instinct urging him to wait and survey the danger.

Alluka has her arms around an enormous beast, scaled and furred in patches, silver and oddly blue whenever the light hit its writhing body. Gon immediately makes for its head, wraps a leg around its neck and an arm around a horn rising from its skull. He pulls hard, away from Alluka, who immediately lets go. Where Gon pulls the beast, it follows, and it’s weakened enough for Gon to shove it against the paper and wooden walls, but strong enough to latch onto his shoulder in turn.

Alluka’s screaming something, but Gon’s covered in gore and blood and noise. He’s elsewhere, hunting another legend.

A dragon.

-

Present day. Six years after Gon watches Alluka shove the dragon’s mouth open and stick her hand inside, six years after he shouts in horror, forgetting legends and folktales.

He rubs absently at a deep series of scars in his shoulder, where a dragon bit him.

There’s a burn on the sole of his foot too, where a curse burnt him.

His trophies.

-

Gon catches movement on the ground, within the pooling blood. A black something is reeking of the same thing Killua and Alluka’s father reeks of. On an instinct, he crushes it beneath his foot. The pain is searing, and he can’t stand it.

He watches the dragon shed itself away, and despite the blood pouring out of his shoulder and the pain numbing him to the sound of Alluka’s voice. He watches the dragon shed itself.

The blood is everywhere now, soaking through his robes, and the dragon’s scales swirl in the hot morning light, revealing Killua at their center. Gon blacks out when his shock jostles his shoulder.

He comes to with Killua wrapped around him, sobbing about how disgusting blood tastes.

-

Night.

The sleeping quarters are empty of spirit-workers, or they’re not his quarters.

Alluka sits beside him, Killua is buried somewhere to his left. A full moon’s visible through the open doors, the fourth since he came here. Killua’s positioned himself nearest the sliding doors, as he always does when they all sleep together. As if he knows, even asleep, he’s the best line of defense.

Gon wishes for a chance to fight him and show him how matched they might be.

Alluka’s hand moves to his wrapped and aching shoulder, and Gon watches her with some trepidation.

“You know, you broke our curse.”

Gon shrugs.

“That black thing? It was controlling Killua, and of course I couldn't do anything with Killua under control, but you broke it.”

Gon wants to wave a hand dismissively, but Killua’s sleeping on his good arm.

“I wanted to help you, Gon. But I think I made things worse.”

Gon shakes his head and reaches up to pat her hand.

“You’re so kind, only love can break that seal, father made sure of it. And I’m so sorry that I—“

Gon smacks her hand lightly, mindful of his throbbing shoulder. Alluka turns her palm upside down and grips his in hers.

“I’ll save you, don’t worry. Just like you saved us.”

Gon, thinking of Killua’s blank faces and Alluka’s hidden section of the manor, frowns as ferociously as he can manage and wonders at how quickly her and Killua have become precious to him.

“We’ll save him, you’re forgetting I’m the strongest one here,” Killua’s voice interrupts Gon’s thoughts, and he flails enough to dislodge Killua from his hiding place in the blankets. His eyes are open and bright, unclouded by sleep. He’s been awake.

Alluka gives a slight screech of frustration and leaps at him him, creating a mess of blankets and limbs that only subsides when Gon claps rapidly and loudly.

A foot lands in his chest, and he grabs it and yanks, not caring whose it is.

Killua pops out from inside his shirt, where Alluka’s gripping the collar and trying to shake him. His smile is so much like Alluka’s. Gon forgets to be mad at him for claiming to be stronger.

“Gon!”

And the noise explodes again, apart from and around him.

-

Alluka walks them to the shore this time, holding Gon’s hand the whole way, so that he won’t be subject to her misdirection spells.

“This was once an entire ocean, and there were hundreds of rivers and streams and brooks that lead to it,” she tells Gon.

Gon still can’t talk, so he nods and swings her hand to let her know he’s listening.

Killua’s holding his other hand, a bit sulkily.

“Brother and I don’t remember this of course, I just found out about it in old records _years_ ago,” Alluka explains. “But it’s said that all the rivers and all the streams were amazingly powerful, and any one of us could tap into them and get more power.”

Killua adds in that she’d need that, but he wouldn’t. His joke covers something nervous in his face.

“What brother isn’t saying is that the rivers and streams were erased, probably by our family. When father came here he took all the power and concentrated it. We think it’s the reason he uses the source as a bathhouse. It has rejuvenating properties that we can sell. That way we keep the actual power for ourselves and hide it at the same time.”

The way she says “our” isn’t right.

“What you came in was one of the old rivers, Gon.”

Gon swings both their hands in question. Or what he hopes appears to be a question, since Killua won’t let go to allow him gestures.

“There was once an odd man who passed through, like you, years and years go. He stayed so long he swallowed himself and became no one. You’ve met him.”

Gon’s met no face, all right.

They reach the end of the grass, the sky swallows it all, and Alluka and Killua are suddenly transparent. His hands close on nothing.

“Alluka? Killua?” Gon reaches for them, and Killua’s eyes flash with the threat of tears.

“We have to let you go, Gon.” He chokes it out and then bites his lips shut, refusing to say more.

The lake behind him (a river?) calls to him silently.

“You have to go back, you’re dying more and more every moment you’re here.”

Gon’s finding it hard to find their voices in the call of the river; he can’t tell what Killua said at the end.

“We told you we’d save you.” Alluka’s fading away, and Gon can’t see her anymore.

Killua reaches out to him, his hand passes through Gon’s chest.            

“It’s alright Gon, don’t cry. I’m sure we’ll- I promise we’ll see you again.” Killua may have sobbed.

Gon’s barely aware of the wetness on his own face; he’s bitten the tears back, Killua’s hard enough to see now.

“You can’t promise something like that,” Gon tells a shadow. “But I will. I’ll find Alluka and Killua again, I promise.”

“How?”

“I’ll be here.”

-

The first year, Gon dives into the water and comes out to see the trees of the Muthalath’s forest. He’s back. The moon is heavy and red, there’s a dull stirring under the lake.

It’s a lake. Before, it was a river. A river so stagnant and unmoving, he had assumed it must be a lake too.

-

The second year, Gon travels the world hunting folktales. When he maps the stars to find the next blood red moon that will rise over the Muthalath, he plans every journey around that.

Rivers have power, some old men say in one town. The closer he gets to the Muthalath, the more the folktales become focused. Rivers are families, says one woman. Sometimes good families, says a young girl, but sometimes bad.

-

The third and fourth years, Gon waits. He starts tracking the vibrations in the water, learns which come from which fish, which movement, which kind of weather.

And which he can’t explain.

He’s much stronger now; he rarely carries weapons when he travels now. It gives him more room in his bag for the stories he hears and writes down.

-

The fifth year, he waits. While he waits, he writes letters to Mito, Leorio, and Kurapika. He edits a symphony for a new friend he met on the coast, and includes it with Kurapika’s letter.

He’s in no hurry. He’s here.

-

This is the sixth year, he’s older now, but not as tall as he once dreamed he’d be. He’s stronger than many, braver than most, and more reckless than any.

He tracks a small pulsing beneath the surface of the water. He’d rather not wait another three years for the ninth year, when he’d have enough threes and triangles to drown in.

He lies on his back and watches the moon until he feels the precise moment the world shifts.

Everything is still. He won’t be able to speak; Alluka’s spells haven’t lifted. He barely manages to keep himself from leaping and diving into the water. He’s on a hunt now.

Legends usually like to reveal themselves dramatically.

In the space between one blink and the next, there’s a weight beside him. He can hear her breathing.

“Gon.”

He smiles and turns his head, and Alluka’s smile is as triumphant as his.

“What did you do?”

“We made ourselves free.”

And Gon turns his head towards the voice on his left, and it’s Killua. He remembers, seeing him now, how badly he wants to spar with him.

The world shifts again, and they’re still with him.

“So what is it about this world that’s kept you away so long?” Killua asks.

“Why don’t you show us, Gon?” Alluka says.

Gon realizes, then, that they’ve never heard him laugh.

He starts their journey by showing them that.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I DID make a bunch of plays on the name Gon, and here, and hear. Those are good words to play around with.  
> One day I'll write a coherent story, but for now...


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